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Rolling On
Official
apathy and a rural mindset ensure that child labour continues to thrive
in the cracker town of Sivakas in Tamil Nadu. INDIA TODAY Special Correspondent
Arun Ram reports on the social evil.
Maari
Amma squats in front of her little house in Thayilpatti village near Sivakasi
with reams of text-book paper and a pencil-thick roller. Swish goes the
roller down every page and before you know it, the 11-year-old has made
scores of paper rolls to be sent to fireworks factories for making serial
crackers. As she pauses for a moment to wipe off those beads of sweat
on her forehead, she notices a colourful page which says, "A Letter
to Grandpa". But it makes no difference: Maari Amma, a Class II dropout,
cannot read. Back to work, she continues to roll the paper at break-neck
speed. By the end of the day, she's made 5,000 of them, enough to earn
Rs 25 for her family.
Anantha Pandiyan, 13, is a bigger bread winner for his family in Vettrilai
Oorani village, some 10 km away. "He can make more than one case
of Lakshmi Vedi (small cylindrical crackers) a day," claims his proud
father. What he doesn't want to discuss, however, is his son's studies.
"Yes, he does go to school. But he is definitely better in his work
than in his studies," is all he is willing to concede. With the sulphur-aluminium-gun
powder paste smeared on his hands and chest, Pandiyan displays his produce
of the morning: two rings of Lakshmi Vedi.
Twenty km further, at the Virudhunagar district collectorate, a poster
on the notice board asks, "Do you know a child between eight-18 years
of age who has performed a brave act between January 1, 2000 and June
30, 2001? Contact: Indian Council for Child Welfare." It's ironical
because there are thousands of them in Sivakasi, performing the despicably
brave act of dealing with explosives and poisons to eek out a living,
while the rest of the country enjoys a spectacular Diwali. But they simply
go unnoticed.
For years now, Sivakasi has been synonymous with child labour but little
has bee precise number of the children working in the fireworks sector,
it is because the government figures are either "comfortably"
low or there is no concerted effort to gauge the ground reality—children
working from home. A survey on working children conducted by the district
administration with the assistance of the International Labour Organisation
(ILO) says there are 6,473 child labourers. However, sources confide that
another study by the UNICEF, the report of which is yet to be made public,
has put the figure at around 20,000.
Says Santha, who heads the Development Action for Women in Need (DAWN),
an NGO working on issues of women and children: "A huge majority
of child labour in the fireworks sector operates from homes. Parents,
unmindful of the extreme risk and health hazards, advise them to stay
away from schools and make crackers since a child earns not less than
Rs 20 a day to keep the fire in the house burning. It is a socio-economic
problem, which the authorities have failed to tackle." Highlighting
the hazards of dealing with poisonous materials like sulphur, salt peter,
barium and strontium nitrates, Santha adds that her NGO has noted underdevelopment
of the uterus in young girls who squat for long hours making paper rolls.
There has been much hue and cry over such issues following which major
cracker manufacturers like Standard Fireworks, Sri Kaliswari Fireworks
and Arasan Fireworks stopped employing children in their factories. Countering
the campaign against fireworks, these companies came out with advertisements
proclaiming "zero child labour." But Sivakasi does not end with
the few big players.
Smaller
manufacturers running tiny factories still find children comfortable labour.
"Children are available for low wages and they do not form unions
to trouble the managements," explains Muthu, an adult daily wage
employee at a big factory: "That's why they are vulnerable to the
social evil. The small-time manufacturers either covertly employ them
in their work sheds or send work to their houses."
A big impediment to the eradication of child labour. With brisk work going
on behind closed doors or in the backyards of these homes, even random
checks have failed to keep track. A small spark from an adjacent kitchen
fire is enough to ignite the stacks of firecrackers kept in thatched-roof
sheds here but neither the children nor their parents are bothered.
Not that Sivakasi is an accident-free zone. It's just that mishaps just
don't get reported. Says Santha: "At least two accidents happen in
the district every month. Unless the casualties are too high, they go
unnoticed." That way, both the villagers and the police are happy
because the filing a case exposes the police's inefficiency in tracking
down illegal manufacture of fireworks. In 1989, when an accident occurred
in the Dawn Fireworks factory at Meenampatti village, the official figure
for the casualties was put at 30. An inquiry by India Today, however,
revealed that more than 300 people, including 200 children, were killed.
The children never figured in the casualty list because that would have
brought to light the authorities' failure to check child labour.
This is especially true during peak Diwali season. Smaller factories,
which are not allowed to store huge quantities of explosives, allow them
to be smuggled to households. The average "pilferage" in such
factories is as high as 20 per cent. "When a small manufacturer gets
a big order," says an employee, "it is only natural that he
has to make people work from home. So we take home work and to finish
as much as possible involve children as well." The rules have it
that no work should be done in factories after sunset and no electric
equipment, including bulbs, should be used in the work sheds. The big
factories have rules as stringent as a ban on metallic material, including
watches, inside the worksheds. In contrast, children work in the nights
at home with a lamp at a distance. In pyrotechnic, as the local fireworks
production is called, aluminium powder is a vital ingredient. A trace
of alumin spark to cause a devastating explosion. Unofficial studies show
that children at work are often responsible for such accidents.
There are about 500 small and big factories in and around Sivakasi and
1.5 lakh families are dependent on the industry. Though the population
of Sivakasi town is only 70,000, on a working day the town teems with
about two lakh people as fireworks employees from surrounding villages
come in for work. Though a good percentage of this work force comprises
children, the authorities are dismissive. Virudhunagar district collector
K. Gopal, for instance, insists there is only negligible child labour.
"We have a system in place. There are village development officers,
mandal-level officials and the police. If any illegal manufacturing takes
place, it cannot escape the eyes of all these people. Since we have no
reports of illegal manufacture of fireworks, we have to believe that there
is no such thing."
Here lies the hitch. Accidents that officials speak of are not accidents
that take place in the villages. There is a central government official
posted in Sivakasi—the deputy chief controller of explosives. "I
am here to monitor the industry as per the law. And my briefing does not
speak about illegal fireworks manufacturing. I have to see if the standards
are met in licensed fireworks factories. Only when the district authorities
ask me to inquire into any accident, I do," admits the incumbent,
A Subba Rao. With such official apathy, child labour in Sivakasi cannot
be wished away in a hurry.
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